Kathimerini Greece Newsroom
Many questions remained unanswered in the aftermath of the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Belarus, including the identity of five passengers that got off at Minsk and a report saying one of them was a Greek national.
According to a Bloomberg report, a Greek national was among five passengers on board the Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius who did not reach their final destination after the airliner was intercepted by a Belarusian warplane and forced to land in Minsk on Sunday.
The passenger plane was diverted to Belarus on Sunday, with reports suggesting foreign agents in the Greek capital took part in a plot described as a “state hijacking” by Minsk to arrest a political dissident on board.
Belarusian blogger Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend were detained after the plane landed over a bomb threat, but witnesses said there was no urgency by officers on the ground after they Belarus security officials singing out the 26-year-old activist.
The Greek passenger who did not re-board the flight told media in Belarus that he was flying to Vilnius in order to change planes to visit his wife in Minsk
Reports that others who did not re-board the flight were Russian nationals were later disputed, with foreign media saying two of them were Belarusian nationals and one of them was Greek.
According to Kathimerini, an official source confirmed on Monday that the individuals who got off were not Russian nationals, while also not ruling out that a Greek man could have been amongst them.
It remained unclear why the specific passengers got off at Minsk while some reports said there was possibly a sixth person who also got off at the Belarusian capital.
But according to a Kathimerini report on Tuesday, the Greek passenger who did not re-board the flight told local media in Belarus that he was originally flying to Vilnius in order to change planes to visit his wife in Minsk, which would have been his final destination.
Western leaders and Ryanair believe sectary agents were on board the flight and left after the plane touched down in Minsk, a claim Belarus has rejected as unfounded.
The total number of passengers on flight was also unclear, with Lithuanian law enforcement authorities saying 121 of the 126 passengers who left Athens arrived in Vilnius.
But on Sunday, both Greek and Lithuanian officials said 171 passengers and crew were on the flight, with Ryanair declining to address the discrepancy or whether the numbers reflected actual passengers including infants or boarding passes issued at the gate.
The European Union agreed Monday to impose sanctions on Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest Pratasevich, a key foe of authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Mystery man at Athens airport
According to Kathimerini, Greece’s intelligence services appeared to be searching for airport camera footage to ascertain the identity of an unknown individual at Athens International Airport who reportedly approached Protasevich.
Protasevich, a tech savvy who ran an opposition social media Telegram channel called Nexta, appears to have used his app at Athens airport, alerting colleagues that he had been approached by a Russian-speaking person who took photos of him.
Kathimerini Greece said the blogger described the mystery man as a Russian-speaking middle-aged male, with thin hair, holding a briefcase.
The young dissident is one of a new generation of Belarusian political activists who surged to prominence during months of protests in Belarus following the last presidential election in August when the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko got to serve a sixth term in office.
Protasevich attended a forum in the Greek capital a week earlier.
